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Child abuser gets 12 years
Lexington Park man, 62, pleaded guilty to sex offense
Wednesday, April 23, 2008
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A Lexington Park man was sentenced Friday to 12 years and seven months in prison on his guilty plea to abusing a 6-year-old girl last fall while he was on work release from the St. Mary’s jail.
Vernon Jon Gifford, 62, also pleaded guilty to committing a third-degree sexual offense in 2005 with another girl in California, and a judge imposed a concurrent 10-year penalty for that offense.
Gifford, who identified himself to authorities as a handyman, was using an employee’s home in Lexington Park last November as an office, court papers state, when he exposed himself to the 6-year-old girl.
Another judge earlier had ordered that Gifford have no unsupervised contact with any child, but charging papers allege that Gifford was entrusted at the home with taking the girl to the bathroom to turn the light on for her.
St. Mary’s Assistant State’s Attorney Joseph A. Stanalonis said this week that the father of the girl in Lexington Park is himself a registered sex offender, as ordered upon his sentencing in 2006 to 18 months in jail on a guilty plea to committing a third-degree sexual offense. The man was released from jail last spring.
‘‘It amazes me that a sex offender can be authorized to have work release with [another] registered sex offender,” Stanalonis said about the case.
Gifford originally pleaded guilty in 2006 to committing a third-degree sexual offense with a 7-year-old girl, and his work-release status granted during an 18-month jail sentence was revoked after his arrest last November.
Gifford also was sentenced in 2006 to serve a consecutive 18 months for committing a second-degree assault in late 2005 on another child.
Gifford’s earlier work release was requested by his lawyer and granted without objection by the prosecutor, who noted Gifford’s eligibility because of no prior record at that time, his cooperation with investigators in the assault case and his placement in the local jail.
‘‘In the future,” Stanalonis said Monday, ‘‘we’ll have to take a look at whether sex offenders should be given work release. It’s important to make sure they’re not working somewhere, where they’re not supervised, with children.”
